KHACHATUR ABOVYAN ARMENIAN STATE PEDAGOGICAL UNIVERSITY

Today, under the initiative of the Pedagogical University’s Faculty of Special Education and “Mutual Aid Centre” NGO, an event headed “If only you knew…” was organized at the ASPU, which was a novelty in its format and quite unexpected for those present.

Within the scope of a month of the International Day of Persons with Disabilities an event was organized with students from different Faculties and passers-by turning them into persons with hearing and visual impairments through a lottery selection just in a few minutes; the “heroes” were able to overcome the “difficult” way from the entrance to the main hall with the accompanied assistance of the MA students.

The sophomore of the Faculty of Special Education Vardouhi Baghdasarova is a future special psychologist. According to her, slight awareness of the environment and the problem itself helped her to immediately learn and adopt the role of a visually impaired person. 

The student, who has never previously occurred in a similar situation, confesses that a few minutes seemed a whole life to her; in fact, she wouldn’t like to occur in such a situation again. 

The Dean of the Faculty of Special Education Ms. Arminei Avagyan mentions in her interview to the old.aspu.am that persons with special education needs are in the focus of another initiative of the institution.  

The Dean is assured that the transfiguration in the entrance hall and the experience of instantly occurring in place of a person with this or that disability was a good opportunity to think about and to reconsider our approaches and viewpoints, to show love and tolerance towards everybody despite their features.

“And for future specialists this was an incentive to love their profession more and to demonstrate more support to persons with development peculiarities.”

The event headed “If only you knew…” continued with the stories of students from the Faculty of Special Education Arsinei, Hripsimei and Sipan.

In fact, under the latter’s leadership a role-play was organized during which four people out of the audience played the role of visually impaired persons trying to guess by touching what objects they were holding in their hands.

Later on, the emotions and excitement were heated with the demonstration of the film “Learn to listen with eyes” shot by the students of the Faculty of Culture together with the competition-game interpreted with the sign language and the song “If only you knew”.

In her turn, the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Special Education, the Project Leader of the “Mutual Aid Centre” NGO Ms. Tereza Azatyan is convinced that this initiative will contribute to the access of people with special education needs into society taking into consideration all their capabilities and peculiarities, to support and to encourage them as an equal to equal.

“The number of students with disabilities at the ASPU is 51; meanwhile the university is undertaking several activities to make their learning process more effective.”

The initiator of turning the open-criticism lesson into an event, the Lecturer on the given Faculty and the President of the “Mutual Aid Centre” NGO Ms. Inessa Harutyunyan in her turn observes that this undertaking is first of all aimed at the awareness raising of the society noting that from the scientific perspective steps are also being taken.

“Actually, WE may be the ones having special needs; WE need to be more open and easy –going to be supportive and helpful to people with special needs,” she assured.

“A few days ago the Faculty marked its third anniversary; during these years a variety of activities have been undertaken, but still it is not correct to remain satisfied with whatever was done.  We need to proceed with our activities to support people with disabilities; they need it a lot,” the Head of the Department of Special Pedagogy and Psychology Mr. Robert Azaryan concluded.